When the assembled audience in the Corpus Christi federal courthouse began to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner," I could feel the hairs on my neck begin to stand on end.

No one had asked them to sing. A singer was part of the naturalization ceremony in which 75 new citizens were scheduled to take the oath of allegiance. But almost as soon as the singer began, the crowd began to join in.

The small U.S. flags handed out were in most hands, some clutched to their breasts.  Accompanying the 75 taking the oath were friends and family along with children. It all made for a lively gathering in an overflowing room.

The naturalization ceremony that Friday morning was one of two that day along with another that had been held the day before. As Senior Judge Hayden W. Head Jr. told them, they were coming to the "end of a long journey."

The journeys that brought each one of them to that room were most likely as different as each person. Some, like the man next to me, said he had been coming off and on to the United States from Mexico since he was a teenager. Now, he said, he had decided that he wanted to turn his "green" card into citizenship.

Others, like the two who had been chosen to speak, had come on longer journeys. The first, a young woman, said she was from a small town in India.  She had come to the United States to study. Now she was a professional in the sciences.

The older man who spoke at the second ceremony said he wanted to be part of the "greatest country on the Earth." He, too, had been born in a small community in India.  Recruited to come to Corpus Christi to teach science, he said he spent his first night in Corpus Christi at a bayfront hotel. As he stepped out in the morning, he said, the beautiful bay was before him. Then someone passing by greeted him with a warm "Good morning." He said he knew he was in a friendly place.

I thought about those new citizens this week as more "huddled masses," as the Emma Lazurus poem on the Statue of Liberty says, came to the U.S. southern border, fleeing violence, crime and seeking a chance at a better life.

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I thought about them as we learned that hundreds of immigrant children, some of them sick, all of them without their parents, older children trying to comfort younger ones, were being held in federal detention centers. I thought about the joy of the new citizens occurring just days after Gov. Greg Abbott had ordered 1,000 more Texas National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border, a place where what is needed is not more troops but more asylum judges, more soap and toothbrushes to hand out to those children imprisoned in squalor.

And I remembered all those families embracing their loved ones as I, like the rest of the nation, saw the photo of the drowned Salvadoran father and 2-year-old daughter, she still embracing his neck, as their bodies lay in the shallow waters of the Rio Grande.  They had died in a desperate attempt to cross into a United States whose government has called this family a threat to national security.

In our cynicism and over-politicized environment, we may forget how the rest of the world sees the United States. In spite of all the things that the nation and its government does to disrespect other nations — think of "the wall" — or to forget what other nations have done for us — think of the international coalition that has been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001 — the U.S. remains a beacon of hope for millions around the world.

That is the reason for the joy that is on the faces of new citizens as they take the oath of allegiance. That same desire to become part of the American dream also, sadly, drives the families making their own journey to the United States' southern border.

You might say, well, the people taking the oath came the "right way" and the families at the border are "illegal." But the "right way," seeking asylum, is in the hands of an administration that is manipulating the asylum process. One way is by "metering," limiting the number who can apply for asylum and leaving those who have to wait in Mexico which, opponents say, is contrary to the law. The "right way" has left hundreds of children to sleep on cold floors, without adequate food, separated from their parents. One 2-year-old little girl died in the arms of her drowned father.  Is this how the "right way" is supposed to work?

At the end of the naturalization ceremony in the Corpus Christi federal courthouse, all the new citizens were embraced by their relatives and their friends. All want to see the certificate that attests they are now part of the United States of America.

There is a banner in the courtroom with the Statue of Liberty. The poem is not on the banner, but the spirit is in the room. "Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

No wonder then why so many of these new citizens choose to have their picture, with certificate in hand, taken here.





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